) 




.c^^^ 




014 434 300 1 # 



HolUngier 

pH S3 

MUlRunF03ai93 






on ROANOKE ISLAND 



By WALTER CLARK. 



NASn BROTHERS, 

BOOK AND COMMERCIAL PRINTEKS, 

GOLDSBORO, N. C. 






A.ntknr 
kU3 3 I9it 



OM ROA/NOllE ISLAND. 



Address of JUDGE WALTER CLARK at Meeting Inauguuated 

BY the State Litekaky and Historical Association, 

Manteo, N. C, 24, July 1902. 



Ladies and Gentlemen: Standing on the Aventine hill, 
hy the banks of the Tiber, we can still behold the cradle of the 
great Roman people, the beginning of that imperial race 
which for centuries held in its control the entire civilized 
world of their day and whose laws, whose feats of arms, whose 
thought, have profoundly impressed all succeeding ages. 

HEKE BEGAN THE GEEATEST MOVEMENT OF THE AGES. 

Standing here Y*e see the spot where first began on this 
continent the great race which in the 'New World in three 
liundred years has far su^assed in extent of dominion, in 
population and power the greatest race known to the Old. 
Farther than the imperial eagles ever flew, over more men 
than its dominion ever swayed, with wealth which dwarfs its 
boasted treasures, and intelligence and capacity unlcnow^n to 
its rulers, this new race in three centuries has covered a con- 
tinent, crossed great rivers, built gTeat cities, tunneled moun- 
tains, traversed great plains, scaled mountain ranges and halt- 
ing but for a moment on the shores of a vaster ocean, has al- 
ready annexed a thousand islands and faces the shores of a 
Western continent so distant that we call it the East. 

We do well to come here to visit the spot where this great 
movement began. It was one of the great epochs of all history. 
Here, 36 years before the landing of the Pilgrims at Ply- 
mouth Rock, here 23 years before John Smith and James- 
town, in the year 1584, the first English keel grated on the 
shores of what is nov/ the United States. Here the greatest 
movement of the ages began, which has completed the circuit 
of the globe. For thousands of years, God in His wisdom, 
had hidden this land behind the billows till His appointed 
time, and in Europe and Asia millions had fought and perish- 



ed for the possession of narrow lands. The human intellect 
had been dwarfed with the dimensions of its prison house. 
In due season Copernicus gauged the heavens, revealing count- 
less worlds beyond our gTasp and Columbus almost at the 
same time unveiled this tangible world beyond the Atlantic. 
Stunned, dazed, the mind of man slowly realized the broad- 
ened vision unrolled before it. Since then the energies of 
the human intellect have steadily expanded, and thought has 
widened with the process of every sun. 

Here broke the spray of the first wave of Saxon population 
and now westward across the continent to the utmost verge 
and beyond it, there rolls a human sea. Three centuries have 
done this. 

About this very date Amadas and Barlow landed here, for 
on July 4, a day doubly memorable on these shores, they de- 
scried land and sailing up the coast 120 miles they entered 
with their two small vessels through an inlet, probably now 
closed. Proceeding further they came abreast of this island, 
where they landed and were hospitably received. 

WHAT WONDROUS CHANGES. 

I^ature remains unaltered. As on tliat July day, of the 
long ago, earth, air and sky and sea remain the same. The 
same blue arch bends above us. The same restless ocean rolls. 
The same sun shines brightly dowoi. The same balmy breezes 
breathe soft and low. The same headlands jut out to meet 
the waves. The same bays lie open to shelter the coming ves- 
sels. The trees, the foliage, the landmarks, would all be recog- 
nized by the sea-worn wanderers of that memorable day. 
But as to what is due to man, how altered ! 

To the westward, where the Indian paddled his light canoe 
on great rivers, iminmerable vessels, moved by the energies 
of steam, plow the waters, freighted v>dth the produce of ev- 
ery industry and the produce of every clime. Where the 
smoke of the lonely wigwam rose, now the roar of great cities 
fills the ear and the blaze of electric lights reddens the sky. 
Wliere then amid vast solitudes the war-whoop resounded, 
ixvling death and torture, now rise a thousand steeples and 
antlicms to the Prince of Peace float upon the air. Where 
tlio plumed and painted warrior stealthily trod the narrow 



war path, mighty engines rush, ^¥here a few thousand 
naked savages miserably starved and fought and perished, 
near one hundred millions of the foremost people of all the 
world live and prosper. Three short centuries have seen this 
done. 

OUR CONTRIBUTION TO EUROPE. 

Looking eastward the ocean rolls unchanged, but not as 
then to be crossed only after two or three months of voyage. 
Already a week sulfices for its passage and across its waves 
even now messages flash without the medium of wires. Be- 
yond its shores is also a new world. When the first expedi- 
tion lauded here, tlie Turk was threatening Vienna, and the 
Spaniard was asserting his right to burn and pillage in Hol- 
land. The fires of the Inquisition burned in Spain and Bel- 
gium. France, sunk to a second-class power, grovelled be- 
neath the rule of one of the most worthless of its many worth- 
less kings, the third Henry — while England, the England of 
Drake and Ealeigh, of Shakespeare and Bacon, and of Eliza- 
beth, already lay beneath the growing shadow of the Armada, 
v/hose success threatened the extinction of English liberty 
and of the Protestant religion. Russia was then a small col- 
lection of barbarous tribes and Germany and Italy, not yet 
nations, were mere geographical expressions. Contrast that 
with tlie Europe of to-day. The change is barely less start- 
ling there than on this side of the water. 

The change has been greatly the reflex action from this 
side. Civilization has been and is on the steady increase in 
the betterment of the masses. The leaders of thought, Shake- 
s])eare. Bacon, Michael Angelo, Dante, Petrarch, the painters, 
the sculptors, the statesmen, were as great then as since. The 
difference is in the masses. Then they were degraded, dis- 
regarded, beaten with many stripes, dying like animals after 
living like brutes ; to-day they have a voice in every govern- 
ment and are beginning more fully to perceive that they have 
unlimited power which they can use for their own advance- 
m>cnt and the betterment of their material surroundings. 

The change started here wlien a new race began, without 
feudal burdens rnd amid the breadth and freedom of un- 
trammel<^d unfiiro. Ysith nev^ paths to tread, new roads to 



6 

make, new rivers to travel, new cities to build, men began to 
think new thoughts and to add to the freedom of nature the 
liberty of speech and of action. 

WHERE THE SHACKLES OF THE AGES WERE BROKEN. 

Well do we come here to visit the spot where the shackles 
of the ages were broken, precedents forgotten and where man 
first began to stand upright in the likeness in which God had 
made him. 

ISTaught tells more forcibly the depression in which the 
minds of the men of that day were held than the fact that the 
hardy English mariners, the descendants of the Vikings of 
old, delayed nearly a century after Columbus had discovered 
the I^ew World before the foot of an Anglo-Saxon had trod 
the shores of jSTorth America. From the discovery in 1492 
to the first landing here in 1584 and the first permanent but 
feeble settlement at Jamestown in 1G07 was a long time. 
Could another new continent such as this be discovered in 
3,000 miles of London to-day, not as many hours would elapse 
as our ancestors of three centuries ago permitted years to pass, 
before the English race would land on its shores. In 1520 
Cortez led the Spaniards to the Plateau of Mexico and sub- 
verted an empire. Yet 65 years more passed before Amadas 
and Barlow led the first English expedition to land on this 
continent. 

JSTot only were men's minds enthralled by governments 
which existed solely for the benefit of the few, but the condi- 
tion of the upper classes was only in degree better than that 
of the poorer. Coffee, sugar, tobacco, potatoes and other 
articles of common use by the poorest to-day were imknown. 
Queen Elizabeth herself lived on beer and beef, and forks 
being unknown that haughty lady ate v^^ith her fingers, as did 
Shakespeare, Raleigh and Bacon. Articles of the commonest 
use and necessity in the dwellings of the poorest now, were 
then not to be obtained in the palaces of Kings. Carpets 
were absent in the proudest palaces and on the fresh strewn 
rushes beneath their tnbles princes and kings threw the bones 
and broken meats from their feasts. Religion was to most 
a gross superstition, law was a jargon and barbarous, and med- 
icine the vilest qnackery. Just in proportion as the masses 



have been educated, as freedom has been won by them, as 
their rights have been considered, the world has advanced 
in civilization and in material well being. 

Unlike the founding of Rome, where the scat of Empire 
abode by its cradle, no great cities arose here at Roanoke Is- 
land, at Jamestown nor at Plymouth. The new movement 
begun here was not for empire but for the people and it has 
advanced and spread in all directions. 

THE GREAT DANGER TO-DAY. 

In 1820 Daniel Webster delivered a memorable oration at 
the anniversary of the landing at Plymouth Rock. In that 
speech he prophesied that our free government could stand 
only so long as there was a tolerable equality in the division 
of property. What would he say could he stand here to-day 
and count over the names of those possessed of $20,000,000, 
of $50,000,000, of $100,000,000, even of more than $200,- 
000,000, and name over the great trusts and corporations who 
levy taxes and contributions at their own will, greater than 
those exacted for all the purposes of government? He in- 
stances that when the great monasteries and other church cor- 
porations under the Tudors threatened Englisli prosperity the 
eighth Henry confiscated their property (as has been done in 
our day by Mexico and other Latin countries) and re-distrib- 
uted their accumulations. He might have added that when 
the new commercial monopolies under his daughter Elizabeth 
bade fair to take the place of the suppressed ecclesiastical 
foundations in re-creating inequality, the Commons called 
on her to pause and that haughty, unbending sovereign had 
the common sense to save her throne by yielding. 

Mr. Webster also utilized the occasion to point to the fact 
that in France by her exemption of nobles and priests from 
taxation, property had gravitated into their hands till the 
wild orgy of revolution had re-transferred it to the people 
and he prophesied that the new law in that country which 
by restricting the right to will property had prevented its 
accumulation into a few hands would inevitably destroy the 
restored monarchy and rebuild the republic. His pro]-)hecy 
has come true. 



The great expounder of the constitution was right. Power 
goes with those who oAvn the property of the country. When 
property is widely distributed and a fair share of the com- 
forts of life are equally in the reach of all, a country will re- 
main a republic. When property, by whatever agency, be- 
comes concentrated in a few hands, a change is impending. 
Either the few holders will bring in, as he stated, an army 
that will change the government to a monarchy, or revolution 
will force a redistribution as in England and France. That 
has been the lesson of history. 

In this day, of wider intelligence and general education, 
let us hope and believe that there is a third way, hitherto un- 
known in practice, and that by the operation of just and wiser 
laws enacted by the sovereignty of the people, a more just and 
equal distribution of wealth will follow and the enjoyment of 
material well being will be more generally diffused among the 
masses. All power is derived from and belongs to the people 
and should be used solely for their good. This is the fimda- 
mental teaching of the institutions which begin their record 
from the landing of the Anglo-Saxon race on these shores, a 
landing which was first made at this spot. 

Had I the ability of Mr. Webster, could I speak with his 
authority, I might point out as he did the great danger of the 
accumulation of wealth in a few hands, and might foresee and 
foretell the remedies which a great, a wise and an all-powerful 
people will apply. But I shall not follow in the path which 
he has trod, haud passibus equis. 

Let us not forget on this occasion that to this island belongs 
the distinguished honor of being the birth-place of the first 
American girl. It is the Eden from which she sprung. She 
had no predecessor and remains without a model and without 
a rival. In that first Eden man was the first arrival and the 
garden was a failure. Here the girl was the first arrival and 
the boys have followed her ever since. Appropriately she 
bore the name of Dare, and daring, delightful, her successors 
have been ever since. We do well, were we to come here sole- 
ly to do honor to the memory of the first American girl, this 
finished, superlative product of her sex and of these later 
ages. 



NORTH Carolina's future. 

When the first expedition landed here there were, it is esti- 
mated, in the bounds of the present State of ISTorth Carolina, 
20,000 Indians, earning a precarious living by fishing and 
hunting and spending their miserable lives in slaying and tor- 
turing one another. To-day ^\■e have near 2,000,000 of the 
foremost race of all the world, living in peace and order. 
Could I like Mr. AVebster, in his Plymouth Rock oration, 
prophecy as to the future — 100 y&ru's hence — I should predict 
a still greater change. I should say that with the same rate 
of increase North Carolina will then have 6,000,000 of people 
and that cities of 100,000 inhabitants will be numbered by 
the score ; that every village will be connected with its neigh- 
bor by electric roads, for steam will have ceased to be a motive 
power; that education will be universal and poverty un- 
kno^\n; that every swamp will have been drained to become 
the seat of happy homes ; that every river will be deepened 
and straightened ; that public works operated for the benefit 
of the people and not for the enrichment of a few, will bring 
comforts and conveniences, now unknown, to the most distant 
fireside; that the hours of labor will be shortened; that the 
toil of agriculture will be done by machinery and that irriga- 
tion will have banished droughts ; that the advance of medi- 
cine, already the most progressive science among us, will have 
practically abolished all diseases save that of old age; that 
simpler laws and an elevated and all-powerful public opinion 
will have minimized crime and reduced the volume of liti- 
gation; that religion less sectarian and disputatious about 
creeds and forms will be a practical exemplification of that 
love of fellow-man which was typified by its divine founder; 
that every toiler with brain or with hand will prosper and that 
under juster laws the only inequality in wealth or condition 
will be that due to the difference in the energy, efforts and 
natural gifts of each possessor. 

This is but the first of many successive celebrations of the 
landing here and if these feeble, fugitive words shall be pre- 
served to that distant day the speaker who shall read them to 
a vast audience gathered here will either justify the prophecy 
or at least he will say, "In the interest of the happiness of 
the human race, they ought to have come true." 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



014 434 300 1 % 






014 4 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 434 300 1 



HolUng^ 
oH %5 



